Good morning, Boulder! -- as in, wake up already. "Only by the hand of G-d does the Jewish nation exist and maintain its sanity." But we can help. Send your comments, suggestions, and submissions to zioneocon at comcast dot net.

Tuesday, April 13, 2004

I always listen to Rick's book recommendations, and have never been disappointed. He says this one is "a treasure."

Read his his blog for more, and note especially this quote from Kelly, written on 9/11 and published the following day -

Of all the uses of terror, none in the past several decades has been more faddishly popular . . . than that of the Palestinians. Yes, Palestinian terrorists and terrorists on behalf of the Palestinian cause murdered innocents -- but that was understandable, the argument went. The Palestinians had been wronged. They were oppressed. They were weak. What else could they do?

Here is where we end up, with murder on a mass scale of people . . . .

If it is morally acceptable to murder, in the name of a necessary blow for freedom, a woman on a Tel Aviv street, or to blow up a disco full of teenagers, or to bomb a family restaurant -- then it must be morally acceptable to drive two jetliners into a place where 50,000 people work.

In moral logic, what is the difference? If the murder of innocent people is for whatever reason excusable, it is excusable; if it is legitimate, it is legitimate. If acceptable on a small scale, so too on a grand. . . . Is not a great good better than a small good?

Other than wanting to change the book title to "Things Worth Fighting Back For," I have no argument.

Read Rick's insightful sifting of Kelly's writings, and then go buy the book. If you can, please take the time to write your own review at Amazon.com, where the latest is from a reader in Los Angeles:

The state of the world is in no small part due to the simplsistic jingoistic ramblings that Kelly epitimized. The next time you see something about how terrible things in Iraq are, remember that Kelly was cheering the parade and deliberately urging ignorance over rational thought as we debated the wisdom of war.

I'd say more, but I don't like condemning the dead all that much, and unfortunately, there will be a lot of ealy graves because Americans took Kelly's advice.